Mussenden Temple

Another beautiful and sunny day in Ireland!  The day these photos were taken it was Saturday May 26th and we are on day seven of our Ireland adventure. Can you believe that after looking at a month worth of posts that we are only on day seven of our trip?   Crazy I know but with 6033 photos in all to chose from and each day we saw and did so much there are bound to be a lot of posts.

This day was a temperature record breaking day for the area, by the afternoon it was 87 degrees Fahrenheit and we were sunburned in spite of having applied several layers of sun screen.

The temple was built in 1785 and forms part of the estate of Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of Derry and Earl of Bristol (or the Earl Bishop). The temple was built as a summer library and its architecture was inspired by the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, near Rome. It is dedicated to the memory of Hervey's cousin Frideswide Mussenden.

What we thought would be a short sightseeing stop to see the temple turned out to be four hours walking around and enjoying the 60 acres of Irish moors that have been turned into fields of clover by the Bishop. His green "carpet covered in white clover".

There was even a walk through the wooded forest area by the pond.

18th-century mansion of the eccentric Earl Bishop. In his later years, the Earl Bishop spent very little time in Ireland. His Irish estates were administered by a distant cousin, Henry Hervey Aston Bruce, who succeeded him following his death in 1803.

In 1804 Henry Hervey Aston Bruce was created a baronet and Downhill remained with the Bruce family until at least 1948, though the family rarely lived there after around 1920. Sadly the interior of the house shows little of its original character. The house was almost entirely gutted by a fire which broke out on a Sunday in May 1851.

The only other occupation of the house came about during WWII when the site was requisitioned by the RAF. The house was subsequently dismantled after the war and its roof removed in 1950.

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This sightseeing spot turned out to be one of our trip favorites. We enjoyed the colors in the garden, the cool of the wooded walk and the sun of a clear blue sky.  What a beautiful place on a sunny day.

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